Bending & Back Strengthening Exercises

Understanding all about bending and back strengthening exercises will liberate you from crippledom with your back.

Erector spinae are the super-strong guy ropes either side of your spine. They work in a day-to-day way to hold you upright, but they automatically over-clench if your back is painful to protect the problem part (protective spasm) and this should be fleeting. If you are too cautious with your back these long back become increasingly rigid and grabbingly painful to bend.

Getting erector spinae to switch off will make your back feel better. Bending normally is the best way to achieve this.

One of the truisms of backs is that over-activity of erector spinae causes reflex under-activity of the deep spinal muscles multifidus (see above). The latter control the individual spinal segments, stopping them slipping forward as the spine bends. Multifidus also keeps the segments stable so they don’t jump about on sudden movement, say when you sneeze, or cough, or lurch at a tennis ball.

When your back is bad you get reflex inhibition of multifidus which feeds back to make erector spinae more dominant. The back feels rigid but at the same time it feels internally weak and too fragile to bend. This is a common conundrum with an acute flare-up; being too frightened to bend makes matters worse. It also makes you internally weaker, and as a reflex your back more superficially rigid. You enter a downward spiral intensifies.

Protracted multifidus under-activity can lead to ‘instability’ of a spinal segment (see my 5 stages of spinal breakdown, Chapter 6 in The Back Sufferers’ Bible). This is especially likely to happen if the disc at the problem level is dehydrated and lacks pressure, thus making it like an under-inflated car tyre: more susceptible to shearing forward as the spinal column tips into a bend.

Exercises for bending and back strengthening

In getting your back strong and back to bending unselfconsciously again, you often need to deliberately wake up the switched off multifidus muscles. You do this by lying on the floor and doing a gentle left to right twisting action of your pelvis, making the spine undulate
like a snake across the floor. In so doing, you break through the veneer of
holding stiffness caused by the long spinal muscles in spasm. The video above shows you exactly how.

The floppy rotating of the pelvis cannot be done too
gently. But, if your back has been rigid for
years (which is common) this seemingly simple exercise will be unbelievably
difficult to do. You find it wretchedly clunky and anything but easy as you seem to move everything but your pelvis – your shoulder blades
and your legs, even your feet – to get some semblance of the action happening.

Doing it for 10 seconds is a long time as the back will tire - which seems strange for such a facile exercise. Doing it little and often is the way to go. You can also do it lying on either side or on your back.

the most important back strengthening exercise is bending normally in Daily Functional Activity

The good news is that bending normally - and not protecting your back - is the best way of keeping it working painlessly

If you want to specifically strengthen multifidus you can use a Roman Chair (or hang supported off a table). Most gym enthusiasts do it wrongly, flipping back straight instead of unfurling, head coming up last. Worse still is to do this exercise with a sand-bag behind the head and head up first. This invokes frenetic erector spinae activity and inhibits multifidus. Segmental instability is common amongst gym junkies and weightlifters for this reason.

Remember, a back will never be healthy again if it doesn’t bend

The best you can possibly do is use your back naturally and normally, making it do life’s everyday things, such as getting the detergent from under the sink, or picking up the kid’s toys. The deeper the bend, the better.

You you can read more about the benefits of bending in the video package 'Back Pain Videos For The Time Poor' below. In this set of six short videos, Sarah explains about all aspects of the spine and what causes spine pain: from the anatomy of the back, what causes the spine to breakdown, a brief outline of each spinal syndrome and what you can do about it. She also explains again about the miracles of bending.

All information contained on this website is provided by Sarah Key Global (Australia) Pty Ltd.All information provided is intended to be of general application only and not specific to any particular person.For specific advice, you should consult a physiotherapist or other healthcare provider.